Kings Place began the year in earnest with its new season, called “Earth Unwrapped: Sirens for a Wounded Planet”, a year-long series of events and installations that create a space to reflect on our experiences of the natural world. Friday night’s offering, “In Paradisum”, a collaboration between the resident Aurora Orchestra and the BBC Singers, took an eschatological angle on the theme, with the journey from earthly burial to transfiguration offering a chance to hear some old favourites repurposed in arrangements not often performed.
Newest on the programme was Kim Porter’s 2021 setting of Harlem renaissance poet Georgia Douglas Johnson’s Your World, which began in declamatory mode but quickly became bogged down in its own dense texture, the upper voices particularly struggling to make their way towards the “rapture” and “ease” that the poem promises, a surprise misfire from an accomplished choral singer (Porter is a member of The Sixteen).
Mahler, naturally, must feature in any earth-themed season, and Song of the Earth, a chamber rendition of Das Lied von Der Erde, will be performed by Aurora in April. Friday night’s taster, Clytus Gottwald’s choral arrangement of Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen proved disappointing. Perhaps comparison is unfair – a chamber choir is not a symphony orchestra, after all – but the beauty of the original is in its languid expansiveness and reflection. Transposed to voices, the solo lines that give the piece its gentle shape (think of the cor anglais, harp, horn, shimmering strings) are ironed out and weighed down with words, the tempo remains almost solidly foursquare and oddly brisk, though fair enough, even the BBC Singers can’t do circular breathing.
Unwrapping anything can yield mixed results, but for every white elephant there is a treasure. Had Imogen Holst not been such a jolly good sport about having her light hidden under Benjamin Britten’s bushel, we might hear more often her name associated with one of his best-known works, Rejoice in the Lamb, which she arranged for small orchestra for the 1952 Aldeburgh Festival. If you’ve never heard this version (I hadn’t, despite singing the original numerous times) go and listen now. Exuberant, inclusive, joyous and playful, but also profoundly understanding the darkness and strife of poor old Christopher Smart’s text, written in part from Bedlam. Britten’s original organ accompaniment evokes holy mystery in a familiar churchy way, but it sounds thin-blooded and ironic next to Holst’s revelatory instrumentation. “For I am in twelve torments” is a spine-chilling moment as the lower strings begin to climb a spiral staircase towards hope, and the crash of the tam-tam at “Shall deliver me out” expresses the terrifying anguish of being incarcerated in one’s own mind. Emma Tring did a beautiful job extolling the virtues of Smart’s cat, Jeffrey, accompanied by clarinet and three lower strings. What is it about cats and clarinets?
Fauré’s Requiem made a welcome appearance in its most profoundly French 1893 incarnation – the one with all the violas, making for a rich and resonant timbre throughout. Jamie W Hall’s serene Hostias created, just for a moment, a wonderful moment of calm in what could feel at times like Nicholas Collon’s restless drive towards paradise. The exquisite ensemble of Aurora and BBC Singers in this intimate setting are reason enough to linger longer on earth.
